


always supposed to be (you)

by alchemystique



Series: always supposed to be [2]
Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 08:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8659282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemystique/pseuds/alchemystique
Summary: She shows up at Truncheon, and Jess pretends he’s not flashing back to the millions of times they’ve done this before. He’s over it. Moved on. He has a life and a job and he’s happy.But she’s Rory Gilmore.And Jess Mariano has never not been in love with Rory Gilmore.





	

She shows up at Truncheon, and Jess pretends he’s not flashing back to the millions of times they’ve done this before. He’s over it. Moved on. He has a life and a job and he’s happy.  


But she’s Rory Gilmore.

And Jess Mariano has never not been in love with Rory Gilmore. 

It’s the ninth of January, which is only a date he remembers because he’s got a release date for his book set exactly a month out from the day Rory Gilmore shows back up in his life, her fingers sliding along the spines of books as he catches sight of her halfway down the stairs. 

Jess stops dead in his tracks, watching her, terrified for a moment he’ll blurt out something ridiculous and stupid and not his place. He usually has time to prepare for this. Over the years he’s gotten good at tricking his brain into thinking Rory is just a good friend, but it takes preparation, it takes time, and there she is, wandering past one of the ugliest paintings he’s ever seen with a furrowed brow, and it’s such an endearing look that Jess has to shake himself. 

Long dark hair curls over her shoulders, and she’s half turned away from him, but he can see the curve of her lip and the jut of her nose, and he is far too old to fall to pieces over the sight of a girl he’d had a few moderately good months with more than ten years ago. 

The second stair from the bottom creaks, something that Jess has known for a long goddamn time, but it doesn’t compute that he’s paying zero attention to the creaky stair until she turns her whole body to look at him.

And.

Well.

Shit.

\------

“What can I do you for, Gilmore?” he asks, and then cringes, because rather than sounding vaguely dorky like he’d been going for it sounds like a very pointed remark about the state of things. 

Her eyes are bright and wide in the moment before she leaps across the space still between them, her arms sliding over his ribs and around his back like they’ve done this a million times, like they’re huggers, like this is just a normal thing that happens between them.

Her still-cold nose digs into the side of his neck, and he can feel the bump of her belly against his stomach, but more worryingly he can hear the stuttered breaths she takes, shaky and loud next to his ear. “Hey - hey, Rory, what’s-.”

She digs her chin deeper into his shoulder when he tries to pull back to take a look at her, and Jess has known the Gilmore’s long enough to understand just how not normal this is, so he stays where he is, and slides an arm over her back, and tries to make sense of what is happening. 

She sniffs against his shoulder, mumbles something about making a mess of his teeshirt, and when she tries to pull away he tucks a hand against the back of her head and hugs her closer. Just a few extra seconds, a moment longer than can be decently attributed to friendliness, but she doesn’t fight it.

When she finally loosens her grip on him she takes only half a step back, and she’s closer than she’s been in years - his breath would hitch at the closeness if his brain wasn’t spiralling down the rabbit hole. 

“I’m sorry. I always do this. Why do I always -.”

“Rory.”

She sucks in a deep breath. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“You wanna - lets - c’mon. Just. Lets go find someplace to sit down.”

She nods numbly, and Jess fights the urge to cup her cheek, to slide his fingers along her shoulder, to - jesus, he has no idea what to do, but he can’t stand the lost look on her face and he’s gotta do something.

She follows after him, up the stairs and into the small bit of office space he’s managed to snag for himself over the years. There’s a couch, in the corner, wedged in against shelves and boxes, and there’s barely any room to maneuver in the tiny space, but he manages to cut them a trail to it, shifting aside the jacket he’s been using as a pillow when he accidentally falls asleep here on occasion.

“Talk to me,” he tells her when he sits, and fights the urge to reach for her hands, to press his own palm to her kneecap and squeeze. He settles for taking her jacket from her as she pulls it distractedly off, and tries not to spend too long staring at the baby bump that becomes more obvious without that extra layer.

Why the fuck is she here?

She takes a deep breath, and then it all comes “My whole life is a disaster. Everything. All of it. I’m spiraling, and I don’t - I’ve never… I don’t know what I’m doing.”

This, he knows, is the most frightening thing for her - no plans, no expectations, just complete and utter chaos - she’s never been well suited to it. He’s got no idea how she managed to live so long without a home base. The realization dawns more slowly than it usually would. She’s coming to him for advice.

It’s not the first time he’s been around to offer up his own opinions when he starts to see her spiral, but this - before it’s always been a stroke of luck that he wanders into her life at the least convenient time, and she’s never sought him out before. This is new. This is -

He won’t get his hopes up. 

She’s got a fucking kid on the way, apparently, and unless Paris Gilmore has somehow managed to collect samples from him in his sleep (God, she’d do it, wouldn’t she? If she could. She totally would.) there’s absolutely zero way it could have ever been his. The last he’d known, she had that boyfriend she never saw, the one Luke and Lorelai always conveniently forgot about, and it’s not like Jess has ever been her go-to person in the past.

“Does the father know?”

She looks stricken. So. Probably not Paul. 

“Talk to me, Gilmore. I can’t help if I don’t know what you need.”

The story comes pouring out, and there’s a part of him that wants to get up and walk away, back down the stairs and out the front door - but it’s that old Jess, the one that couldn’t handle any of the shit in his life, and he’s not that guy anymore. He had to fight tooth and nail to let that guy heal. So he sucks in a deep breath, nods his head, and forces himself not to yank his hand away when she curls her hand into his own.

\------

“Luke, hey.”

“Hey, Jess. What’s up?”

“I was actually - this is gonna sound weird, but is Lorelai around?”

“You’re right, it’s weird.”

“Is she around, though?”

“She’s right here, but why -?”

“Rory’s here.”

“Oh.” Silence over the line, and then, “Oh.”  
  


He fights the urge to snap out a ‘thanks for the heads up’ - he’d been pretty firm when he told Luke there was nothing going on with him and Rory, and at the time he’d been telling the truth - hell, it was still true now, even though the woman in question was currently passed out on his couch. He’d deal with Luke later.

He hears muffled voices over the line - Luke’s got his hand over the receiver, most likely, because even now he resists change with the best of them and he’s never quite gotten used to the fact that a cell phone is not the same thing as an analog. 

And then, “Jess? Is Rory -?”

“She’s fine. Out like a light at the moment, but she’s…”

“Yeah.”

As always, he has to stumble for his footing with Lorelai, even when she’s states away and can’t stare him down. “Any idea why she came here?”

He hears the scoff in her voice when she huffs out a breath, and has to fight down the defensiveness he feels. But when Lorelai speaks, her voice is soft. “You really don’t have any idea?”

“If I did, how likely do you think it’d be for me to call you just to ask.”

“You’re right, that’s crazy.”

“So…”

“I’m only going to say this once, because it still freaks me out and it’s been months since Rory let me in on this little secret, but you’re the only person who’s ever been able to get through to her when she’s going off the rails. I’d have thanked you for it sooner if I didn’t kinda hate it.”

“I accept your gratitude regardless.”

“I really don’t want you to.”

“Too late.”

“How’s our girl doing? You have any sage advice for her, oh wise one?”

He rolls his tongue over his teeth and tries not to prickle. Or focus on “our girl” for even a second. “I’m booking a flight to London for tomorrow. She needs to tell him. But I don’t think she can do it alone.”

“Don’t you two have a history? You and Logan, I mean?”

“I have history with everyone in her life. It’s kinda my thing.”

She hums, and it’s a contemplative sort of hum. “I wonder why that is.”

“Are we bonding right now?”

“God no.” She pauses. “Don’t tell Luke.”

“He’d never believe me anyway.”

“Take care of her, Jess.”

She hangs up the phone before he can respond, which is probably for the best.

\------

Rory sleeps on his shoulder the whole flight.

She goes to see Logan by herself, and he doesn’t fight her on it - he’s here for Rory, not to cause a scene.

She texts him two hours after she leaves for Logan’s to let him know she’s fine but she needed some air, and Jess tries not to worry. He manages to read the same sentence fifty times in his dog-eared copy of Persuasion (Because why the hell not, right? He can torture himself a while longer with maybe’s and could be’s) before he gives that up, and instead spends his time staring at the ceiling of the hotel room, listening to the empty silence and wondering what the hell he’s doing with his life.

She returns with pink cheeks chapped with cold, two bags that are nearly tipping her sideways, one with food and one with books, and a grim look on her face.

“How’d it go?”

Rory sighs, drops the books on the bed and digs into the other bag for a carton of something that steams when she opens it. “Want one?”

“Rory.”

“He wrote me a check, okay? We had a nice long talk about family and duty and legacy and...he wrote me a check.”

“I’m sorry.”

Her eyes catch and hold his own, and she looks more tired than anything else. “No you’re not.”

Jess doesn’t bother to deny it. “I’m not gonna lie and say I thought he was gonna leave the heiress. But that seems… I’m sorry you’re hurting.”

She shrugs. “I didn’t really expect anything else. I just… I always had this idea in my head of what we’d be like, together, you know? And in practice it never really worked. When it was just the two of us, things were good - great, even, sometimes. But he has this whole empire, and his family, and his horrible father, and…” Jess watches the roll of her shoulders, the fall of her hair, and hopes his face isn’t telegraphing how much he does not give a shit about the Huntzberger empire. “I guess I always thought my life would be different than this.”

They eat takeout on the edge of the bed closest to the televisions, shoulders bumping as they fight over the last dumpling (“I’m eating for two, Jess.” “And the dumpling is in my possession. Possession is nine tenths, and all that. That’s still true in England, right?”) (He’s waving it around for emphasis, and she eats it right off the chopsticks he’s holding out. He rolls his eyes and knocks her shoulder and stares at her for a long moment while she’s staring into the nearly empty carton in her hands), and they watch BBC until the exhaustion of the day takes hold of them both.

Jess returns to staring at the (now dark) ceiling, listening to Rory’s breathing in the other bed, ready for another sleepless night. 

“Do you ever think about us?”

It’s so out of left field that Jess sucks in a deep breath, loud in the quiet of the dark room. He’s silent for a long moment, mulling over the question.

“Not as much as I used to.”

“But sometimes?”

There’s a waver in her voice, like she’s terrified to know the answer either way.

“Yeah. Sometimes.”

He figures that’s the end of that, and they return to silence. Her breathing slows and evens out, and Jess wonders for probably the hundredth time in the last few days what the hell he thinks he’s doing.

“Me too. Sometimes.”

It’s a punch to the gut and a glimmer of hope all in one, and Jess sighs, closes his eyes, and pretends to believe he’ll get a wink of sleep.

\------

“When is your next appointment?” he asks her on the drive back to Truncheon, and she pulls out her phone and rattles off the details. She stares at him for a long moment when she’s done. “You want company?” he asks, and her eyes linger. 

\------

The day his book comes out, she’s the first person to buy a copy of his new book, grinning at him as she waves a pen in his face and asks him to sign it for her. She tells him she’s proud of him, and there’s a warmth in her eyes he remembers from a long time ago, before the world and their own lives made the thing they had going too hard to continue, back when they weren’t always meeting at the wrong time in their lives.

He asks her about her own book, and she presses a hand against her belly and her smile widens.

\------

She cries the first time she hears the heartbeat, reaching for his hand without thought, her fingers curling into his in a way that feels way too intimate for this whole ‘friends’ thing he’s been playing for years and years, and Jess - Jess has to figure this shit out before he goes completely insane. Because she isn’t the only one with teary eyes or a suddenly too tight throat, and she hasn’t corrected the doctor once when she calls Jess ‘daddy’ and -

And he lets it go on for months and months and suddenly this thing has fingers and toes and she still hasn’t corrected the doctor and -

“Rory, what the fuck are we doing, here?”

\------

Rory bolts, because of course she does.

Jess takes his time chasing after her. He spends a day finishing up business in town, makes sure to let everyone know how to get in contact with him, rues the day he ever left New York City to begin with, and then packs a bag.

Stars Hollow looks exactly the same every time he comes back, but as he drives the winding streets to Luke and Lorelai’s, something about it feels heavier - it’s not home, and it never will be, not to Jess, but - but this place has always been a place of change for him.

Lorelai answers the door and sighs. “Yeah,” she says with a nod, a little resigned and a little understanding, but he thinks she’s talking to herself more than him. “Yeah, that seems about right.”

\------

“What, exactly, do you want from me, Rory? Because if you want a buddy to hold your hand and help you work through shit, I’m your guy. But if there’s something else -.”

She kisses him, fingers curled around the lapels of his jacket, a desperate edge to the way she backs him against the wall, her tongue swiping against his lip in a way that makes him gasp, and later he’ll laugh for a good twenty minutes when the reality of the situation hits him, but it’s a long time later, long after their clothes litter the floor of Luke’s old apartment over the diner, long after she presses him into the mattress, long after he marks her skin with his lips and teeth and hands, and she shudders and breaks apart in his arms.

\------

Truncheon publishes her first novel on the ninth of January, and Rory calls him a sap. For once he doesn’t argue the point.  



End file.
